Costa Rica

UNAIDS estimates that 9,700 persons live with HIV in Costa Rica (2008, 229). National HIV prevalence rate: 0.3%. The male to female ratio of the AIDS cases in 1992 was 13:1, but by 2004 it had tapered to 5.4 for each woman, showing that even in this “upper middle in­come” devel­oping nation, the trend of the epi­demic is toward the heterosexuali­za­tion of the epidemic more common in poorer coun­tries.